


i've got a girl crush

by lazyfish



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Like lots of pining, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21867997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/pseuds/lazyfish
Summary: Every action has an equal, opposite reaction - or, as Fitz falls more in love with Hunter, Hunter falls more in love with someone else.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Lance Hunter
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	i've got a girl crush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_ufo_party](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_ufo_party/gifts).



Hunter loves Bobbi.

Fitz realizes it almost immediately. Hunter makes a comment about preferring Bobbi blonde and even though there’s so much vitriol in the words, there’s so much care, too. No one’s ever cared whether Fitz’s hair was blonde or brunette, long or short, curly or straight. Bobbi says that she didn’t change her hair for Hunter, and it almost - _almost_ \- implies she’s changed her hair for him before, without him knowing or asking. Fitz understands, understands wanting Hunter to be happy, because that’s what he yearns for. He’s stopped wishing for a happy ending for himself, really, but wishing for a happy ending for someone else is so much easier.

He watches Hunter watch Bobbi, and there’s an intimacy there he can’t quite grasp. Familiarity, he decides. Hunter knows Bobbi in every state, and hair color is just a proxy for that. Hunter has seen Bobbi at the highest highs, when she is bright and golden, and her lowest lows, when she is stooping to touch the earth. The way he looks at her is just for the two of them, and Fitz might as well be intruding by watching Hunter look at Bobbi.

He can’t stop, though. He physically can’t make himself look away from Hunter. Fitz can’t make himself stop wishing for someone to know him, someone to love him.

He can’t make himself stop wishing for that someone to be Hunter.

\---

Hunter loves Bobbi.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It’s a physical principle that Fitz memorized, rote, when he was young. In this case, the action seems to be him falling deeper in love with Hunter - with hazel eyes and crinkle-eyed smiles and dimples that don’t come out often enough. The reaction? Hunter falls deeper in love with Bobbi.

Fitz is confident Bobbi realizes her gravity. She has to realize Hunter is getting closer, that she’s pulling him in. At least physically, she must realize it, because she leans into him, whispers words so close to his skin no one else will ever hear them. Emotionally, maybe she doesn’t. From all the watching he’s done (and yes, he watches, and waits, and wants) Bobbi seems to be… out of touch with how she feels, and how Hunter feels.

Fitz wonders if he’s _too_ in touch with his feelings. If it’s possible to be so caught up in thinking about his emotions that he forgets to actually feel. But that doesn’t make sense, because he does feel - violently, achingly, horribly. They’re all words he doesn’t want to associate with love, but how can he think of love as something beautiful when it just seems to be turning him into something wretched? Loving without being loved in return - it is violent. It aches. It is horrible. So Fitz will keep those words until they stop being true.

\---

Hunter loves Bobbi.

He loves parts of her Fitz would never think to love about someone.

Hunter loves Bobbi’s perfume. Fitz falls in love with Hunter’s cologne.

Hunter loves Bobbi’s hands. Fitz falls in love with the calluses on Hunter’s palms, the chips in his nails.

Hunter loves - Fitz falls in love with something new. That’s the pattern, and it’s infuriating, because all the things Fitz would never think to love about someone are easy to love in Hunter. How, Fitz thinks, can he fall in love with a voice? It’s just the way the person’s mouth shapes air, something entirely out of their control. How can someone be so much more than the sum of their parts? It perplexes Fitz, and infuriates him a little, too. 

He just wants to understand what about this man enraptures him to the point of madness. At this point, he’s not sure he’ll ever figure it out.

\---

Hunter loves Bobbi.

The pair of them fall together, and Fitz is left watching from the sidelines. He keeps himself up at nights, wondering what it is like to fall into someone like that. He keeps himself up at night, thinking about what they’re doing together. And Fitz feels _awful_ for wondering about that. It’s not his business. He has no claim to Hunter, no reason to feel twisted and tortured by thinking about the other man with someone else.

But he does feel that way. Most of the time he can ignore it, but when the night is dark and he’s alone with his spiralling thoughts, he thinks about Hunter, and Bobbi, and all the clothes that may or may not be between them. He thinks about that, and a myriad of other things. He thinks, and he overthinks, because that’s Fitz’s specialty.

Thinking (overthinking) doesn’t change reality, though. The world keeps turning, and Fitz keeps wishing for a man who belongs to someone else.

\---

Hunter loves Bobbi.

The worst part is, Fitz is starting to believe Bobbi loves him right back. At the beginning it was easy to believe she was just stringing Hunter along because she wanted someone to call her beautiful or to follow her like she was the sun. But when Bobbi smiles at Hunter, it’s hard to believe she doesn’t love him. Fitz has seen that smile before, on his own face. There’s just one picture of him and Hunter together, but Fitz is smiling the way Bobbi smiles. How strange is it to see your face on someone who you don’t know at all?

Bobbi laughs more when she’s with Hunter. Hunter laughs more when he’s with Bobbi. Fitz loves Hunter’s laugh, how it seems to come up from his stomach by way of his heart. Hunter never laughs when he doesn’t think something is funny, so the laugh is something to be treasured. He considers recording it, but there’s something about Hunter’s laugh that can’t be captured. The ephemerality of it is yet another reason to bask in every single moment Fitz happens to be the cause of it.

Fitz had thought Bobbi was the sun to Hunter’s moon, but it’s obvious, listening to them laugh, it’s the opposite. Hunter is sunshine, and Bobbi just reflects back the love he pours out to her. Bobbi without Hunter is a midnight sky at a new moon - still enchanting, but not quite whole. They take turns, being the sun and moon, Fitz realizes late one night. _That_ is why they work. 

Where does he fit in? Fitz has learned he can’t be a sun. He’ll burn himself alive. He doesn’t have the patience of the moon, the trust his love will always come back to light him up again.

 _The ocean_ , something inside him whispers. He’s the ocean to Hunter’s moon, dancing around the other man. But the tragedy of it all? 

They will never be able to touch.

\---

Hunter loves Bobbi. 

This is undeniable.

But Hunter is not a sun, or a moon, or an ocean. He is a person, a fascinating person like no one Fitz has ever met before. He is broken and he is whole, and he has a way of making things seem simple.

Things like: there could be three.

Hunter loves Bobbi.

He loves Fitz too?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, EJ, for dragging me back into my Fitzhunter trash pit. I hope my barely-coherent Fitzhunter pining pleases you. :')


End file.
